A Study in Green
by Paimpont
Summary: John's girlfriend spends the night, and Sherlock decides that it's time to do something about it. Jealous!Sherlock, S/J slash.


**~A Study in Green~**

**...**

**Summary: **John's girlfriend spends the night, and Sherlock decides that it's time to do something about it. Jealous!Sherlock, S/J slash.

**Warning: **Rated **M** for Sherlock/John slash (same-sex romance).

**Author's Note:** This story is dedicated to the amazing **Lady Heliotrope**, who introduced me to the wonders of BBC's _Sherlock_. Check out her stories! For those who are following _To the Waters and the Wild: _Next chapter coming up soon! I just needed to get this fic out of my system first.

...

"This," said Sherlock, "is intolerable."

I blew a quick kiss in the direction of the departing cab and turned away from the kitchen window. "What is intolerable, Sherlock? The fact that I have a girlfriend?"

Wide, blue-grey eyes stared gravely at me. "Yes."

I sat back down at the breakfast table and poured myself a cup of coffee. "Really? Would you care to explain exactly why my happiness bothers you?"

A slight frown passed over Sherlock's pale face. "Oh, don't be absurd. It's not your _happiness, _as you call it, that I find intolerable, John, but rather the fact that there was a stranger, dressed in _your_ dressing gown, at our breakfast table when I entered the kitchen this morning. She was reading my newspaper, and she said 'hello'."

I buttered a piece of toast and reached for the marmalade. "She is not a stranger, Sherlock. Her name is Eileen, and you have met her before. She is my girlfriend, and she spent the night here. What is it about her you object to, her wearing my dressing gown, or her reading your paper?"

Sherlock pondered this for a while. Then he said firmly: "Both."

I put my toast down. "So you don't want me to have a girlfriend at all? You want me to live a bachelor life here at Baker Street with you, without ever bringing a girl home?"

Sherlock brightened. "Right. I'm glad we understand each other, John."

I groaned. "Come now, you are being preposterous. You are asking me to refrain from having a love life, just so you won't have to suffer the shock of having a charming girl peek at your copy of _The Times_ in the morning?"

"She folded the paper in half. It made a crease."

I sighed deeply. "This is ridiculous, even for you. Do you expect me to abstain from sex for all perpetuity in order to save you from having your newspaper folded the wrong way in the morning?"

His luminous blue-grey eyes studied my face. "She had started the crossword puzzle, John. In ink. And it was all _wrong_. You can't expect me to tolerate that sort of thing."

"And you can't expect me to live like a monk forever, just to suit your eccentric habits."

Sherlock smiled angelically and helped himself to coffee. "Oh, I wouldn't ask you to abstain from sex, John. In fact, I have a marvelous idea." He leaned forward over the breakfast table, fixing me with his mesmerizing gaze. "You should break up with your crossword-challenged girlfriend, and then you can have sex with me instead."

I almost fell off my chair. "Sex with... with you? What?" My voice sounded all hoarse and strange.

Sherlock nodded. "Precisely. That would, I think, be the most logical solution to our little dilemma. That way, you can satisfy your erotic urges, and my paper will remain untouched until I am ready to read it in the morning."

"But you... But I..." I swallowed, hard. "I mean, that's absurd. You are not even gay."

Sherlock smiled ever so slightly, and he looked more like an angel than ever. "Oh, good! I was worried that you were going to say that _you_ are not gay. That would have been a problem. But my sexual orientation is not an issue at all; I'm very open-minded. I'd be perfectly happy to ravish you. Or be ravished, if you feel strongly about that point."

I shook my head slowly. I could feel my cheeks burning now, and the small cramped kitchen was spinning slowly around me. An image crept into my mind, uninvited, of _him, _in my bed, his face flushed with desire, his breath hot against my face, and his long, delicate fingers caressing my skin, touching, stroking...

I faltered. "You mean you would actually... Oh, God. This is... This is the most absurd... I mean, have you ever even been with a man before?"

"No."

"Or a woman?"

"No. But you needn't worry - I have researched the subject of sex very carefully, and I believe I would be a very skilled lover."

I rubbed my temples warily, still wondering vaguely if this wasn't just a terribly strange dream of some sort. _A skilled lover? I bet you would be, too, _I thought to myself. _You would be as ruthlessly brilliant at _that_ as you are at everything else. _My throat suddenly felt dry. "This is insane, Sherlock. You would... do _that_, just to keep me from seeing Eileen?" My voice came out as a whisper.

"To keep you from seeing anybody," he corrected mildly.

I stared at him. He was leaning back in his chair now, impossibly beautiful in the faint blue-white light that streamed through the kitchen window. His dark curls were still wild and mussed with sleep, and his mouth was rose-dark in the half-light of morning. And his eyes, those strange penetrating sea-colored eyes that could see into my very soul... He had thrown his tattered robe on as carelessly as usual, and it had fallen open at his chest, revealing a glimpse of smooth pale skin underneath. For a moment, I wondered what his skin would feel like under my fingers.

I rose abruptly from the table. "No."

"No?" His voice was soft.

I turned my back to him and studied the street below our window intently, half hoping to see Eileen's taxi. Maybe she would change her mind about going to work and come back and rescue me from the wild, absurd thoughts and images that swirled through my mind. "I am afraid I must turn down your... er... interesting offer, Sherlock."

"Why?" I could feel him stirring behind me, but I did not turn around.

"Why?" I stared down, unseeing, at the early morning traffic. "Because this is not how the human heart works, Sherlock. You make it all sound so... cold. So rational. But humans - ordinary humans like me - don't sleep with someone just because it is logical and practical. And you are my _friend..._"

"Of course I am your friend." I could feel him close behind me now, his breath warm against my neck. I tried to suppress a slight shiver at my spine. "A much closer friend than _her_. _And_ I know how to spell 'crepuscular', which, judging by the ruined crossword puzzle, is more than one can say for the amorous Eileen. I would think that makes me a far better choice of lover for you." Gentle hands grasped my shoulders and turned me around. His gaze was serious and intense. "What do you say, John?"

I drew a deep, shaky breath. "You just don't get it, do you?"

"Get what?"

"Anything!" The words came tumbling out of me. "You just stand there, as cool and beautiful and logical as ever, and propose that we become _lovers_ because it would be so convenient for both of us. But don't you know what would happen if... if I were to go along with your preposterous suggestion?"

"What would happen?" He sounded genuinely curious. His bright eyes were burning my soul, leaving something raw and ragged inside me.

I slumped down in my chair and covered my face with my hands. "Do you really think I could... make love with you - with _you - _ and remain the same? It would change everything. How could I sleep with you and not be changed by it? I am not made of stone, as you are. If I were to sleep with you, I would surrender myself to you, to your eyes and your skin and your flesh and... to _you. _And I would love you helplessly, hopelessly, with all my heart - and you... you would not be able to love me back. You would be the same cold, dispassionate, ruthless man you have always been, and it would break my heart, because I would want so much more from you. I can't let you do that to me. I would fall in love with you, and you could never love me back, because it's not in your heart to love anyone." I finally drew my breath and glanced up at him.

He looked as if I had slapped him. For a moment, he just stood there, rigid with shock. His face was even paler than usual. Then he whispered: "Is that what you think? That I couldn't _love_ you?"

I laughed mirthlessly. "When have you ever loved anyone or anything in your life, Sherlock?"

He sat down, a puzzled expression on his face. After a long moment's silence, he said softly: "But I do think I might be in love with you, John."

"You are just saying that to get what you want." I didn't want to look at him.

He pondered this for a moment. "But what I want is _you. _I want us to be alone here in the morning, just you and me. I want to be the only one who knows about that funny way your hair sticks up in the back when your first wake up in the morning, before you brush it. I want to be the only one who knows that you hum when you make coffee. And I want to be the only one to hear those little breathy moaning noises you make when you have sex-"

"You were _listening_ to us last night?"

He smiled a little. "Well, of course. It's rather hard to sleep with an intruder in the flat, like _her._ I am a man of habits, and I find it terribly distracting to imagine a complete stranger in your bed, making noises and movements that don't belong there. And then there was _her _scent in the shower this morning, too. I hate it when the bathroom smells like jasmine. I want the shower to smell like _you, _that comforting smell of musk and soap, mingled with the salty tang of semen."

I groaned. "You know that I masturbate in the shower in the morning? Great."

"Of course I know. It's one of the things I like about you." He spoke quietly, pensively. "I like to lie in my bed in the morning and listen to you in the shower and imagine what you look like when you come. And I find it exceedingly annoying that you let _her _know_._ Perhaps that was why she was smiling so smugly this morning at the breakfast table, because _she_ knows what your face looks like when you come, and I don't."

I regarded him curiously. "Sherlock? You really _are _jealous of her, aren't you?"

"Well..." He kicked the table leg moodily. "It's_ her_ fault. She kissed you right in front of me when you joined us in the kitchen this morning, as if she owned you. It was unsettling. It made me feel unwell."

"Unwell how?"

He thought for a moment. Then he smiled, one of his charming little lopsided smiles. "Like I'd taken a bullet to the chest. A frangible bullet, to be precise, one that breaks apart once it enters your flesh and tears you up inside." He reached out and touched my mouth hesitantly with a slender white finger. "And she left little traces of lipstick, too, right here on your mouth, in that appalling shade of peach." His finger stroked quickly over my lower lip. "I don't like that color at all. Your lips are supposed to be pale brownish-red."

I closed my eyes. "Sherlock-?" I could hear the sound of my own heartbeat.

"What?" An unsteady hand brushed through my hair.

I opened my eyes and looked at him. "Promise me you won't break my heart."

He gazed at me for a long time, a curious expression in his bright sea-colored eyes. "How could you think I would, John? I, who have only ever had one friend, and who will only have one lover..."

And then he leaned forward and kissed me on the mouth. The first touch of his lips against mine was the end of all reason. I flung my arms around him and held him so close that I could not tell which frantic heartbeat was his and which was mine. I moaned against his lips, and he whispered: "Yes. That sound. I like that sound. It's _my _sound, John, for me..."

He pulled back and looked at me for a long moment, and then he murmured: "I need to see you come, John. Just for me." A slight flush spread over his high cheekbones now, and his voice trembled ever so slightly as he breathed: "In _my _bed. Today and every day."

I buried my head against his neck, and I could feel the rapid beating of his vein pulse against my cheek. "All right," I whispered.

...

It was bloody brilliant. He made love with the same furious intensity he does everything else, except that now his full attention, his single-minded, almost preternatural focus, was all directed towards me. He explored my mouth, my face, my skin, and every part of my body, with the same impassioned fascination as when he ponders the enticing clues to a new mystery. It took my breath away.

I was helpless in his hands, in his arms, under his warm limbs. I opened myself to him, body and soul, spellbound. And oh, oh, oh - the look on his face when _he _came, buried deep inside my flesh, that strange expression of wonder and tenderness and something resembling awe...

He buried his face against my chest quickly, as if afraid that he had let me see too much. I reached out and ran a trembling hand through his wild curls, over and over. After a few moments, he looked up at me, almost shyly, and asked, absurdly: "Was it as good as being with _her_?"

"With who?" I smiled at him and stroked his flushing face. "I don't remember anything other than this."

He laughed then, a sudden, irresistible, boyish laugh. "Good. I'll make sure we keep it that way..." And he kissed me, and his kiss was as soft and tender as the warm morning sunshine that slanted through the window.


End file.
